Joyce Lien Kushner
Joyce's Bio
Joyce Lien Kushner is a Taiwanese American dance artist, teacher, and maker. She is also a certified Progressing Ballet Technique® instructor. Throughout her years, Joyce has trained dancers of all ages and has performed and collaborated with artists all over California – Modern City Repertoire, Strong Pulse Dance, Epiphany Dance Theater, Surhabi Suraf, Sarah Bush Dance, Amy Lewis, Five Feet Dance, and Chris Black Dance.
In 2015, Joyce founded TILTshift Dance in San Francisco. Now in San Diego, she continues to teach, make work, and holds space for other dance artists to create and work. In 2024, she was awarded an 18-month artist residency by NTC Foundation in ARTS DISTRICT Liberty Station to help further these endeavors. In 2025 under TILTshift Dance, she co-organized and presented AADF, San Diego's first Asian American Dance Festival and residency program, centering AAPI dance artists and stories.
Joyce currently teaches at Lynch Dance Institute and Malashock Dance, as well as guest teaches throughout San Diego County. She has proudly serves on the board of Disco Riot since 20214.
Artistic Philosophy
"Human relationships fascinate me and inform both the content of my creative work and the collaborative approach I take. Complex beings, we perpetually navigate a myriad of emotions, beliefs, and desires, all of which shape how we relate to one another. When creating work with other artists, the process of watching and discovering how they relate to both the subject matter and to each other is just as important to me as is the research into my own personal relationship. I hold dance as a form of embodied storytelling, through which we explore our individual and collective histories, identities, morals, passions, conflicts, and communions. Through dance, I believe we can ultimately find connections, illuminations, empathy, catharsis, and sometimes even solutions to our human quandaries."
Teaching Philosophy
“The practice of training and educating dancers continually evolves. Dance techniques and styles change, and today's choreographers require versatile dancers. As a lifelong student myself, I continually research, learn, and add to my toolbox, focusing my practice on contemporary approaches.
I truly enjoy teaching all levels and ages. When working with trained dancers, particularly classically trained dancers, I help them find new movement pathways, ease in muscular effort, and added dimension in movement quality. How I teach reflects my concern for dancer longevity, incorporating functional anatomy and somatic approaches in my classes. When working with novice dancers, the joy of dance is first and foremost. Adult beginning and returning dancers hold a special place in my heart, as I myself retuned to dance in my mid 40s after almost 20 years away and a having child.
Thankfully, "who can dance" has evolved. I believe that dance is for everyone and every BODY – if you can move, you can dance. My class is not only a place for training, it is a safe, inclusive space for exploration, investigation, play, and above all, acceptance.”
Personal Story
"I am the daughter of hard working Taiwanese immigrants. I am a SoCal native who loves the beach. I am a wife, mother, ex-corporate manager, entrepreneur, and chocoholic. I am a dance artist, teacher, and maker whose journey has taken many detours...
Dancing professionally in Los Angeles during the 80s and 90s, few 'mature' female dance role models existed. Believing my time was up, I left dance in my late 20s and transitioned to a career in retail management and visual merchandising, which later led to branding and marketing. After marrying and having a son, I eventually 'burnt out' on corporate life. I left and started a Fair Trade organic chocolate business called Coco-Zen, building and running it for 7 years. However, dance is my first love, and it ultimately called me back at the ripe age of 46. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, the area's rich and diverse dance community welcomed me. Free from the constraints I felt in my earlier dance years, my time in San Francisco allowed me to develop more deeply as an artist, mature as an educator, and more importantly, showed me the importance of community. Now back in my hometown of Del Mar/San Diego, I am eager and excited to be teaching, making work, engaging, and hopefully adding to the dance community here...so much has changed!"
Dance & Asian American Identity
“An American born child of immigrants, being Asian and being American are two polar identities that I navigate between. Depending upon who I’m around or what is expected of me, the expression of my identity often morphs, whether consciously or subconsciously. Being a practitioner of modern and contemporary forms, dance had sat firmly in my American identity for much of my life. Then unexpectedly at the ripe age of 48, I was invited to explore my Asian identity through dance making for the first time. Working with other AAPI dance artists on a similar journey, I finally realized what it was like to live and tell my multicultural story through this art form that I’ve held so dear. I uncovered a wholeness that I didn’t know I was missing and a creative well that continues to shape me today as an artist.
AADF and the AADF residency program are born from a deep desire to share this journey with others, who like myself may have unconsciously suppressed sides of their identity, trying not to be too much of one or the other, but always feeling never enough. I hope our AADF participants can find validity in their many selves, liberate and celebrate those selves equally, and ultimately realize wholeness within their dance making bodies.”